


How Strange The Change From Major to Minor

by JustAPassingGlance



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 15:43:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15585198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustAPassingGlance/pseuds/JustAPassingGlance
Summary: It had been the hair dryer that had done it. The very expensive hair dryer that Sebastian had gotten him after weeks of Blaine complaining that his hair never set right when it air dried. It flew out of Blaine's hands and shattered against the wall, only about a foot away from where Sebastian stood.Parent Trap(ish) AU.





	How Strange The Change From Major to Minor

**Author's Note:**

> For the record, even though I've desperately wanted a Parent Trap AU for ages, up until 2 days ago I had no intention of ever writing one because everything I touch turns to angst.

He hated the person he made Blaine become. The way that, over the last few years, all the worst parts of his personality had started to break through, leaving too little left of the man he had fallen in love with.

He knew he had done that. Knew he was too selfish and stubborn and hard to bend in the ways he would have needed to in order to make their relationship work.

Not that Blaine had always been the perfect partner, even before things had fallen apart. Even he would admit that he had his flaws (and that self-deprecation, hatred, and almost eagerness to confess to those flaws was just one of the many things that Sebastian had done.) But Sebastian knew that if blame were to be apportioned, he would receive the brunt of it.

He shouldn’t have stayed as long as he had, and maybe that’s where he took on most of the blame. He saw the failing of their relationship for what it was but he still continued on, too stubborn to throw in the towel and too unwilling to give everyone who ever said he could never make commitment work the satisfaction of knowing that they were right.

Because that was what mattered to him, apparently. In the end. More than Blaine’s well being and certainly more than his own.

“I’m sorry,” he had said as he finally left.

He didn’t know if it was the leaving he was sorry for or the fact that he had stayed for so long.

* * *

 

It wasn't the first time he had left. That had happened some three years before and lasted just over a week. It said a lot that he couldn’t remember what the catalyst had been. They had been fighting more and more often and the fights had started to verge on volatile.

It had been surprisingly easy to leave. Easy to pack up his bag and even easier to leave his key on the counter.

It was the easiness of it all that let him walk out the door. It should have been harder, he had thought, to just give up on his life and it had to mean something that it wasn’t.

He had stayed at Quinn’s. She never tried (too hard) to lecture him or convince him that she knew what was best for him. She just let him sulk in the guest room and made sure he didn’t get so drunk that he couldn’t get to work in the morning.

After nine days away, the fights hadn’t seemed so bad. The distance had made it easier to think clearly and their irreconcilable differences stopped seeming so irreconcilable.

Their problems, he had realized, could be solved if only they stopped digging in their heels and hoping the other would be the one to finally give. Maybe not all of them. But many of them, maybe even most.

There would be adjustments that they’d have to make on both sides—as he repacked his bag he was already steeling himself to the fact he would finally agree to go to therapy—but he knew they could make it work and the sacrifices he had, up until then, been reluctant to make would all be worth it.

Blaine would always be worth it.

* * *

 

The second time he left was fifteen months before the girls.

That time hadn’t been a serious leaving. It had been more about regrouping and finding their feet again. At least that’s what he told himself afterwards.

They had both started to let things slide. They were becoming stubborn again, even when they knew it would hurt the other. They cancelled their therapy sessions until they just decided to stop going; not because they felt like they had resolved all their issues but because they were letting other things take precedent over their relationship.

It was easier to ignore the work they knew was needed in order to keep their relationship strong than to expend their energy on it.

They had outside stressors too. Sebastian’s boss had been trying to pressure him to relocate, although he had made it clear on multiple occasions that could never happen. Blaine’s parents weren’t speaking again and guilting him and Cooper into being the go-betweens for their petty insults, even as their grandfather got sicker.

And then there was the adoption process, which they had just started and would have been trying even at the best of times.

It seemed that no one wanted to help two gay men adopt.

“You can’t jointly adopt,” one overly-polite woman at one agency had told them, “you aren’t married. I’m sorry, we just can’t help you.”

It made no difference that they couldn’t get married or that, for all intents and purposes they considered themselves to be.  

So he had left again. Packed another back, although this time he kept his keys.

He had stayed at a hotel across town. On the second day he had called Blaine and they had talked for almost 3 hours. Not about their relationship but just talked, which was something they hadn’t done in months.

It was a nice reminder that they actually liked each other and had things in common other than the space they lived in.  

Sebastian was back home after three days and had promised he would never leave like that again.

* * *

 

The third time was four weeks after they brought the girls home.

It had been the right choice and it should have been the last time. He was gone for ten hours and he spent the entire time thinking about Lindsay and Hayley, the two little girls who had become the center of his universe.  

He wasn’t just leaving Blaine, he was leaving his family.

He was back at home before Blaine had even realized that he left and not just gone to work for the day. The fight that had sparked, when Sebastian walked back in, hastily packed duffel bag in hand, had lasted for nearly a week and never officially came to an end.

It might’ve been the right choice to leave Blaine but he couldn’t bring himself to leave them.

* * *

 

It had been the hair dryer that had done it. The very expensive hair dryer that Sebastian had gotten him after weeks of Blaine complaining that his hair never set right when it air dried. It flew out of Blaine's hands and shattered against the wall, only about a foot away from where Sebastian stood.

It hadn’t been aimed at him but was definitely thrown in his direction.

It left behind a hole and as he watched the plaster crumble he knew it had to be over.

Their fights had never been violent, but they had sparked with the threat of them before. Maybe it had only been a matter of time before they went in that direction.

Sebastian had turned around and left without a word. Gone to his favorite bar and downed one drink, then two. Halfway through the third, he called up Quinn who came to get him and let him sleep in her spare room again.

Toxic was a word that he had learned about in their therapy sessions. Over weeks they had been instructed in how to spot their own toxic behaviors and how to talk about it when the spotted it in the other.

Despite all the instructions, they had somehow managed to miss the signs. It wasn’t just certain actions that felt toxic anymore, their entire relationship had become poison.

Blaine was waiting at home for him the next day, looking as wrung out as Sebastian had felt.

"I'm leaving. For good," he had said, wondering if the thin and reedy voice coming from his mouth was actually his own. "It's for the best."

He hadn’t even packed a bag, that last and final time. He hadn’t trusted himself to stay in there any longer.

He went to the nursery and kissed the girls, resisting the urge to wake them up from their nap. Kissed them the same way he did when he had to slip out early in the morning. He whispered, “I love you,” and stood for a very long moment in the doorway just looking at them.

In that moment, he had almost changed his mind. How could he miss out on even the next few hours of their lives. They had been what had brought him back the last time and he had known since the first time he laid eyes on them that he would do anything for them.

Anything but subject them to a lifetime of the fractured, bitter mess that had become his and Blaine’s relationship.

* * *

 

The division of their assets brought their anger to a level that surprised even them. Their bank account was split evenly but everything else spawned yet another fight.

They fought over everything, from Sebastian’s grandmother’s dinning room table (that they only had because Blaine wanted it) to the sofa which had been the first piece of furniture they had purchased together to the bedside tables neither of them particularly cared about.

Sebastian didn’t want any of it.

In the end he took some of the books and the desk from the office.

“I don’t give a fuck what you do with the fucking rest of the fucking stuff. You can fucking burn it if you fucking want. I don’t fucking want it,” he had snapped after three and a half weeks.

He didn’t care about any of their material possessions. He had the money to replace them and he’d rather start his life anew then live surrounded by things they had once owned together.

All he wanted were his children, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask.

Apparently, he wasn’t that heartless.

Quinn didn’t have the same compunction and the day they finished fighting over the books, she dragged them both to her office and stared them down until they stopped glaring at each other.

“Custody,” she said simply and abruptly. “Lindsay is Sebastian’s daughter. Legally. But, as you know,” she looked at Blaine, sympathetic but resolved, “she isn’t yours. And Hayley,” she turned to Sebastian, “is—”

“We know,” Blaine interrupted.

“Legally,” Sebastian said, at the same time.

It had lingered unsaid in all of their other fights. Maybe it was why Blaine was so desperate for him to take everything else. If he had taken enough then he might not ask for more.

Or Blaine wouldn’t have felt like he had to give it.

At the time, it had seemed like the perfect solution. No one wanted to let a gay couple adopt a child but there were agencies that would let one partner adopt. They had been talking about which of them it made the most sense to be their child’s legal father when they received a call about the twins.

They didn’t have to choose. They could both be fathers.

If only they had known how fast everything would fall apart. (Never mind that they should have known.)

Sebastian had thought about it in the moments where he couldn’t stand to be apart from his daughters another second longer. He imagined marching back to his old-home, banging on the door, and asking, no demanding…

But he couldn’t.

“I assume you’ve talked to a lawyer?”

It took him a second to realize that Quinn was speaking solely to Blaine. She knew everything that he had done in the last few weeks and he hadn’t talked to anyone other than her. Custody of the girls had been the only topic he had avoided, no matter how often she tried to bring it up.

Blaine nodded his head and Sebastian thought he was going to be sick. He knew they weren’t exactly speaking but the fact that Blaine was taking steps to keep him from his children… That they hadn’t even talked about it. He didn’t even know if he could do that. Hadn’t even thought about the possibility. And now…

His stomach clenched and for a minute he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

“Lindsay is my daughter,” he said, although he hadn’t realized he’d opened his mouth.

“I know. And we can work something out.”

“Agreed. But until we do, Lindsay will be with me.”

“We can’t separate her and Hayley.”

“Hayley can stay with me too.”

He had cribs and everything else they would need. All still packed and piled up in the corner of the suite he had been staying in. But he had them.  

He recognized the panic that he was feeling flash across Blaine’s face. The newly dawning fear that he might never see his children again. That he would leave them with Sebastian and Sebastian would what—take them and disappear into the night?

He couldn’t believe that Blaine would ever think that about him.

He also wouldn’t have believed that he could ever think that about Blaine but there he was, sitting in Quinn’s office being gripped by a panic he never thought possible. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t hold a rational thought in his head. He couldn’t think of anything except how badly he needed to see his daughters.

“We’ll figure something about.” Blaine said but Sebastian couldn’t focus enough to figure out whether it was assurance or desperation lacing his voice. “We’ll figure something out.”  

 


End file.
